The Lost Army

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘. . . Avoiding imprisonment and torture, you mean. That’s what he’s really afraid of.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought that Menon knew fear.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong. He’s not afraid of dying. What terrifies him, although you’d never be able to tell, is falling into the hands of the enemy. Of suffering the horrible mutilations that he saw inflicted on Cyrus’s body, of being disfigured by torture. He perceives the perfection of his body as an absolute, demiurgic work of creation that must not be spoiled.’

  ‘What does “demiurgic” mean?’ I asked.

  ‘That it was made by the Divine Creator, the one who made us all.’

  The blaring of a bugle interrupted us. The alarm!

  ‘What’s happening?’ I asked.

  Melissa glanced at me and in her luminous amber eyes I saw all her worst imaginings become reality.

  We ran out of the tent and towards the southern limits of camp, where we could already see people gathering.

  The bugle continued to sound the alarm, an insistent, penetrating din that tore your soul apart. We could already hear what the soldiers were saying.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘He’s one of ours!’

  ‘But he can barely sit up in his saddle!’

  ‘You’re right, look, he’s bent in two, it looks like he’s about to fall off.’

  ‘He’s wounded! His horse is covered with blood.’

  Sophos appeared, as always, from nowhere, on his dark horse. Neon was right behind him and he was armed to the teeth.

  ‘Whoever has a horse follow me! In battle order, form up immediately, in closed ranks! Surround the hill, in a semicircle, now, there’s no time to lose!’

  He hadn’t finished speaking when a cloud of dust appeared at the horizon and in it the ghostly shapes of horses and horsemen in a frenzied gallop.

  ‘Follow me!’ shouted Sophos, urging his steed forward at great speed. Neon and the others were close behind, realizing his intent. They caught up with the lone horseman and flanked him, pressing against both sides of his horse. Sophos took the horse’s reins and Neon rounded off the group at the rear.

  Arrows began to rain out of the sky all around them and meanwhile the bugle had changed its tune. It was calling the men to arms. The warriors ran forth carrying their banners, as if they could hear, in that call, the voice of their commander Clearchus, who was no more. They drew up in closed ranks with their backs to a hill that stretched out like a promontory to the east, almost all the way to the banks of the Tigris.

  The cruel reality of what had happened was now apparent. The Greek warrior on horseback had his belly slashed open and was holding his guts in his hands, drenched in blood. His face was a mask of pain and he would have certainly fallen off his horse if he hadn’t been supported. Sophos yanked hard on his steed’s reins to stop him, halting the horse carrying the wounded soldier as well. Four men jumped to the ground and encircled their comrade, lifting him by his arms and legs. They carried him behind the front line formed by our men, who opened and then closed their ranks again as they passed.

  I could hear Sophos’s voice shouting, ‘A surgeon! Call a surgeon at once!’ Melissa and I ran in that direction, hoping to help the doctor who would be looking after the wounded man. Melissa kept asking me, ‘Who is it? Have they recognized him? Who is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s no one we know, for certain.’

  The Persians soon arrived at a gallop, but drew up short as they found themselves up against the closed phalanx, bristling with spear tips, impenetrable. They changed direction, racing back and forth and firing off clouds of arrows that fell without damaging the wall of shields raised in defence.

  Melissa and I reached the foot of the hill. The surgeon was already bending over the wounded man and was laying his instruments out on the roll of leather he’d placed on the ground.

  ‘Bring me water and vinegar, if you can find any,’ he said as soon as he saw us. ‘Hurry, or this man will die.’

  We ran off to search for water and vinegar and as we were returning we saw Sophos on foot urging the phalanx forward against the Persian cavalrymen, forcing them back towards the Tigris.

  The surgeon washed the terrible wound and gave the warrior a piece of leather to bite down on so he wouldn’t scream. He ordered us to hold down his arms, and began to sew him up. He pushed the man’s intestines back into his belly with his hands, then stitched first the membrane that held them in, then the muscles and finally the skin. The pain was so extreme that the soldier’s face was contracted into the most awful grimace I’d ever seen.

  One of the remaining high officers, Agasias of Stymphalus, arrived just then and asked, ‘Has he said anything else?’

  ‘No,’ replied the surgeon. ‘Does it look like he’s in any condition to have a conversation?’

  ‘He told Sophos that our men are all dead and the commanders taken prisoner.’

  Melissa burst out, ‘The commanders are still alive, then?’

  She got no answer. The surgeon finished his stitching and poured raw vinegar on the wound, extracting a final whimper of pain from his patient.

  ‘The Persians are retreating!’ we heard someone yell.

  Agasias shot a look at the phalanx, then turned back to the surgeon. ‘How long can he live?’ he asked.

  ‘A sword sliced through the muscles of his abdomen and the membrane, but didn’t damage his intestines. He could live at least a couple of day, maybe more.’

  ‘Keep him alive. We need to know everything he can tell us.’

  The surgeon sighed and began to bandage the wound.

  THAT POOR LAD was an Arcadian, his name was Nicarchus, and he’d endured unthinkable pain. He collapsed as soon as the surgeon’s work was done, finally losing consciousness.

  ‘Don’t leave him,’ I said to Melissa. ‘I’ll be back later.’ I headed back to camp.

  The sun had set and it was getting quite dark. The Persian contingent had withdrawn and disappeared. Since their surprise attack had failed, they must have returned to their base. They could not have hoped to break through the barrier of the phalanx. Once again, the mere sight of the red cloaks had paralysed the enemy. Sophos had gone out with a squad of scouts on horseback to patrol the area downriver, in the direction of the Persian camp, and for the time being showed no sign of return. It occurred to me that he might have gone to surrender, but I immediately discarded the idea: it was he who had drawn up the army, he who had saved Nicarchus of Arcadia, at least for the moment.

  I went looking for Xeno, who I hadn’t seen for some time, and when I entered our tent there he was putting on his armour. The most beautiful suit he had, made of bronze embossed to resemble the muscles of a man’s chest, a sword in a sheath adorned with winged sphinxes, a silver mail belt, a Corinthian helmet with a flaming red crest and a pair of silver-plated bronze greaves with lion’s heads at his knees. I was struck dumb by his appearance; he looked like another person. ‘You frighten me,’ I said, but I asked him no questions and made no comments because I knew that anything I said would irritate him. I’m sure that my look was eloquent enough; everything I’d warned him about had come true. What hurt me most was that all of this might not have happened had one of those great warriors listened to me, to a woman.

  Xeno threw a grey cloak over his shoulders and left. I watched as he slowly walked across the camp.

  What I saw was demoralizing. The men seemed to have completely lost heart. They were sitting here and there in small groups, talking in whispers. Others were sitting alone, their heads hanging low. Perhaps they were thinking of their homes, their brides, the children they would never see again. A sad tune wafted through the air, sung softly in some dialect from the north that I couldn’t understand. Maybe they were Menon’s Thessalonians, missing their white-cloaked commander whose strong, steady voice would no longer accompany their song.

  Some of the men had built fires, others were preparing dinner, but most of them seemed to be in
a trance, as if they’d been struck by lightning. They had no leader, they were surrounded by enemies on all sides, they didn’t even know where they were or how to get home. But all at once Xeno jumped onto a wagon and shouted out, ‘Men!’

  In the sudden silence, his voice rang out like a bugle call, and many heads turned his way. Illuminated by the flames of a campfire, he looked like an apparition. He must have planned that move; he must have studied everything carefully and thought of what he would wear and the effect he would have on the men.

  ‘Men!’ he shouted again. ‘The Persians have betrayed us! As you know, they have captured our commanders and massacred our comrades who had consented to meet with them, hoping for peace. They had sworn that we would march side by side all the way to the coast and that they would keep their promise so as to lay the basis for friendship and even alliance in the future. Ariaeus has betrayed us as well. He’s been pitching camp with Tissaphernes’s army, and has broken off every contact with us and with our command . . .’

  As Xeno’s discourse developed, the warriors started approaching the wagon, in small groups at first and then in entire units. Many had taken up arms and were wearing full battle gear to show that they were not afraid. As I continued to watch, I could make out in the darkness the shape of a horseman advancing at a slow gait. He drew up at the edge of camp and remained there to listen.

  Xeno continued, ‘We can’t just wait idly for their final blow. We must react. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do for our commanders. They may already be dead by now. We can only hope that death came rapidly, as is a warrior’s due. But we, here and now, must think of the future. Of our return, of the long road that separates us from home . . .’

  I heard one of soldiers close to me turning to his companion. ‘Isn’t that the writer?’

  ‘Yes, it is. But if he has any idea of how we can get out of his inferno, I say we should listen to him.’

  ‘At just a few paces from where we stand,’ continued Xeno, ‘lies a lad whose belly was ripped open. He’s in the throes of death, and no one can say whether he’ll be with us tomorrow or down in Hades. You saw him; he had the courage to make his way back here holding his guts in his hands, so that he could raise the alarm and save us from enemy attack. Such a sacrifice cannot have been offered in vain: we must prove ourselves worthy of such superhuman courage. I propose that we meet in assembly and elect new generals and new battalion commanders to replace those we have lost. You have seen me do battle at Cunaxa, but I do not belong to any of your units. I’m here only because Proxenus of Boeotia asked me to follow him. But I was a cavalry officer once and am well versed in the organization of such units. We’ll need cavalry for scouting out the passes and occupying them when the army is in transit, for reconnaissance of the territory and for chasing off the enemy and making sure they stay away for good.’

  The horseman I’d seen touched his heels to his horse’s belly and slowly approached the wagon from which Xeno was making his speech. Who else but Sophos?

  Perhaps he’d been waiting for his moment to speak. He actually seemed rather annoyed at Xeno’s initiative; maybe he thought he belonged up there on the wagon instead of Xeno.

  ‘And just where will we go, Athenian?’ he asked, raising his voice.

  Xeno took a look at him and understood. ‘Where will we go? We don’t have much choice. We can’t turn back. We can’t go east because that would take us further from home and straight into the heart of the Persian empire. We can’t go west because that’s where Tissaphernes’s army is headed with that bastard Ariaeus. We have to go north, through the mountains. We can reach our cities on the Euxine sea; from there it will be easy to find ships that can take us back home.’

  ‘Excellent plan,’ nodded Sophos, dismounting from his horse and getting onto the wagon next to Xeno. ‘Does anyone have any questions or objections?’

  His sudden apparition was greeted by a widespread buzz. Up until that moment, Sophos had always stayed away from the action; he’d never taken a position and had rarely been consulted about his opinion. No one even knew whether he’d taken part in the battle of Cunaxa. I knew that he had. There were days when he seemed to have disappeared completely. But now he seemed to know that his time had come.

  I had my own idea about what he was up to. He had been placed in the army’s midst as an observer, with the task of reporting back to someone. But this someone had also put him there for another reason: in case events came to a head, or the whole endeavour went sour, he was the man who had the energy, the intelligence, the courage and the cunning to react, and to induce the others to do the same. You could clearly see that he’d done just one thing in his life: wage war. And there he was, on the wagon next to Xeno, covered in armour, with a black cloak on his shoulders. The signal was clear, and no one seemed ready to challenge him or claim leadership for himself.

  One of the native interpreters came forward. ‘I’ve heard that there’s no way out to the north. The terrain is impassable, the climate is extremely harsh. You’d have to face one high mountain peak after another, raging rivers, vast glaciers. Those desolate lands are inhabited by savage tribes who are fiercely attached to their territory. They have never been conquered. They say that an army of one hundred thousand men was sent by the Great King into that region some years ago. Not one of them ever came back out.’

  The interpreter’s words put the hum of voices to an abrupt stop as the camp plunged back into dejection.

  ‘I didn’t say it was going to be a walk through fields of green,’ replied Xeno. ‘What I said was we don’t have a choice. But if someone has a better idea, please step forward.’

  Total silence fell over the gathering. Only the wild voices of nature, the jackals and the night birds, could be heard distinctly.

  Sophos spoke.

  ‘Men!’ he thundered. ‘You heard well, we have no choice. We’re going north. We’ll face whatever trials await us: we’ll journey upstream and we’ll climb the mountains, we’ll occupy the passes with our quickest troops and we’ll keep them open until every last man has passed. None of you will be abandoned, not even the sick or the wounded. Each man will be assisted until he regains his strength. No one will be left behind!

  ‘We’ll take what we need as we go: blankets and cloaks to protect us from the cold, and food. If they attack us, we’ll fight back, and they’ll be sorry that they ever tried! Men, there are ten thousand of us! We weren’t defeated by the Great King, whose army was thirty times more numerous than ours. We certainly won’t let ourselves be stopped by some wild mountain tribes.

  ‘I am Chirisophus of Sparta and I ask you to entrust me with the command of this army in Clearchus’s place. You will be able to count on me by day and by night, through heat and cold, whether you’re healthy or ill. I will run every risk, I will face every threat and every danger and – by all the gods in the heavens and the Underworld – I’ll take you home, I swear it!’

  In any other situation, his words would have been greeted by a resounding roar of enthusiasm, but the men’s uncertainty was too great, their doubts too many. The warriors realized what kind of hardships they would be up against and they knew already that many of them would fall. The Chera of death was already marking with black fog those she had chosen to drag back with her to Hades. Very few voices rose to acclaim his speech.

  Sophos began again. ‘I know what you’re feeling now, but I swear to you that I will keep my promises. We shall vote now! Those in favour of my proposition come forward and touch the shaft of my spear. If the majority of you do not have confidence in me, I will gladly obey the man that you choose in my place. But before the third shift of guard duty begins, this army must have a commander or we’ll be all dead within days.’

  I was thinking of what Clearchus and Agias, Proxenus and Socrates must be going through. But I couldn’t get my mind off Menon. He who had described the atrocity of the tortures used by the Persians with such frightening realism, he was their victim now. I felt te
rrible for him, I had a knot in my throat, a hole at the bottom of my stomach that made me shake. What colour was his pure white cloak now? What remained of his statuesque body?

  Xeno was the first to touch the shaft of Sophos’s spear. Next was Agasias and then Glous, and Neon, who looked him straight in the eye as he did. The other officers lined up and, one by one, did the same.

  I couldn’t bear to just stand there and watch that long line of men who were electing their new commanders. I needed to know more about the men we’d lost. I wanted to be able to tell Melissa, who must have been going mad with the uncertainty of not knowing.

  I don’t know how I found the courage but I managed to sneak off and to reach the banks of the Tigris. I stripped off, tying my gown around my waist, and slipped into the water, letting the current carry me off. The moon in the sky was almost full and the river glittered with myriad reflections. The water was warm and comforting. It didn’t take long to reach the point where the pavilion stood. It was a large tent like the ones used by the desert nomads, erected on poles and a system of braces. There were no other structures as far as the eye could see; that had to be where the ambush had taken place. There were still people inside; I could see their shadows in the lamplight, and the sentries had lit a fire on the southern side.

  I swam to the bank and crawled over the ground so as not to be seen, because there were large groups of Persian horsemen scattered around the tent for quite some distance. The progression of events leading up to the attack soon became clear to me. The riverbank was all trampled upon; there were what looked like hundreds of footprints and muddy tracks leading all the way to the tent. Alongside me were a great number of reeds cut to a length of about one cubit. They were strewn all over the terrain. I picked one up and blew into it: it was hollow.

  I understood all at once where the ambush had come from: the river! The attackers were hiding under water, disguised by the floating water weed. They were using the reeds to breathe through. They must have leapt suddenly out of the water after our men had already gone into the tent. They’d killed the guards our commanders had posted outside, probably at a distance, using arrows. Maybe they were the same soldiers who were patrolling the territory now. I waited there, lying in the mud, for a long time, until the moon started sinking in the night sky.